This post is written by Sioned Cox, a Part II Biological Anthropology student at the University of Cambridge who has been doing a fieldwork project on diets and nutrition here in Soumosso, Burkina Faso, as well as working as my field assistant.

Sioned and Friend

Village life here has the same sense of community I’m used to at home in the South Wales Valleys. People are more important than time and efficiency is achieved from necessity. Its worship becomes evident as a foreign, social construct. There’s bliss in observing and learning about people without understanding a single word being spoken. Gestures, intonations, garments and decorations burst with the ordinarily subconscious symbolism. Behaviour is familiar and as predictable as at home but this commonality is as pervasive as is the exotic.

Rising at 3am to fill a bucket with squirming caterpillars by torchlight is as novel an experience as any. Three hours later, bucket full to the brim with meaty caterpillars, local collector Ajita and I laugh together at my brownish, greenish hand, filthy from defensive caterpillar spit. Ajita’s hand is spotless. It seems there’s a knack to the collection method and Ajita’s experience shows. She brings me water and enacts scooping up the abrasive gravel to show me how to remove the harmless, stubborn stains. We drink tea and enjoy her homemade cakes before the arduous preparation of the caterpillars begins.

The caterpillars have to be washed three times before cooking, with specks of leaf and twigs painstakingly pinched away at each step. We hunch over buckets of black water, surrounded by mounds of caterpillars: my five kilograms, Ajita’s twelve and Charlotte and Momoni’s sixteen. The cleaning process takes a further three hours and the sun is now strong enough to burn my skin. Ajita’s baby, Alimatou, plays happy and curiously with the caterpillars, in between plenty of breaks for breastfeeding.

Later that afternoon, with all thoughts of the caterpillars temporarily wiped from my mind by a welcome rest, I enter the kitchen to the most glorious smell. With dozy excitement I wonder what we are having for lunch today and I’m greeted at the stove by a pan full of well-cooked, seasoned and relished caterpillars. I enjoy them in some bread like a hotdog and relax after a satisfying day.

The caterpillars come down the trees and move to neighbouring trees, searching for more shea leaves to eat. As a result, there are very few shea leaves left on the trees.

A shea tree stripped of its leaves by very hungry caterpillars

Some people are worried that many of the caterpillars wont reach maturity, because there arent enough leaves left. So, even though there seem to be caterpillars wherever you look, the harvest might not be as big as people had hoped.

But for now, men, women and children alike are waking at 3am every morning to collect caterpillars by torchlight. And Sioned (my new field assistant) and I are joining them.

People only collect caterpillars here in the early hours of the morning, because this is the time when the final instars descend to pupate in the soil. This means that during the daytime the caterpillars roam free from predators, but by night they're in high demand. I even spotted a snake enjoying the harvest the other day..

Each morning, we've been measuring the hours we spend collecting, the weight of our harvest, and (when technology permits) the distance we walked.

So far, between us (me, Sioned, and our neighbours - N=6), on each morning for the last three days we've collected for an average of 2hrs 25min, walked an average of 4.9km and collected an average of 8kg of caterpillars per morning! Our average departure time is 3.38am and our average return time is 5.49am.

8kg of caterpillars looks something like this (there's about 8kg in each of these buckets):

Our neighbour's 6-month old daughter intrigued by her first caterpillar harvest

But how much income can be made from 8kg of freshly collected caterpillars? And how many people does that feed? These are questions I'll be able to answer with confidence by the end of the season. Stay tuned, and meanwhile if you have any other questions about all things edible-caterpillar-related, please post them below or send me an email.

PPS. I'm trying to take video when I can, because it's so much easier to grasp what this is all like if you see a short video clip. I've been posting these on Twitter, @libertyruth - follow me if you're interested!

This post is written by Sally Pearson, a Part II Geography student at the University of Cambridge who has been working as my field assistant here in Soumosso, Burkina Faso.

A three-day journey involving a night bus, two planes, a tuk-tuk, a motorbike, a bicycle and my rucksack that ended up in Paris as opposed to Ouagadougou brought me to the small village of Soumousso in southern Burkina Faso. As we eventually arrived at the final destination, it was clear that we were literally in the middle of nowhere- Soumousso is barely even visible on google maps- and I felt a very long way away from home.

Other than the obvious differences to the Yorkshire Dales such as the mud huts, lack of electricity and the constant beating down of the sun, the many parallels that I noticed that could be drawn from home made settling into the ways of life in Soumousso seem natural.

One of the farming households

The daily activities of community and gossip, rampant livestock stampeding throughout the village and even congregating in the local “pub” seems to sum up rural village life all over the planet.

The local where people gather mid-day for a gourd of millet beer before heading back to the fields

The traditional nuclear family is challenged by the home set-ups of households in Soumousso. Polygamy is a common occurrence where the men have multiple wives and many subsequent children. These remarkable families live under the same roof quite amicably and function as a unit. There was no escape for me, and I was bombarded with marriage proposals with persuading offers in the form of goat-themed gifts. I decided to settle on becoming the second wife of local farm worker, Poda, whose first wife is due to give birth to their second child any day now. We have been experiencing marital bliss, with Poda keeping me well supplied with eggs and taking me for night-time rides on the back of his motorbike. I regret that I will be leaving a broken home on my return to Yorkshire.

Sally and Poda

The most outstanding difference to the UK is the ability of multiple ethnic groups of Burkinabes to cohabit without difficulty. Different tribes, with different languages - indeed there are 74 individual languages spoken across the country- of Muslim, Christian and traditional religions rub shoulders faultlessly within Soumousso. The conflict that has arisen in equivalent situations in the West appears to have been remedied in Soumousso by, in all honesty, pure banter with its subsequent laughter and hilarity. Illustrating this, in my first week I witnessed what was primarily shocking jokes made to a visiting man of a different village based on how his tribe had once been enslaved by people from Soumousso. However the result was everyone falling about laughing. I quickly learnt to take nothing anyone said seriously, and the merriment generated from each and every conversation has profuse and vital lessons for the West within the current precarious atmosphere.

Finally, as a tip for any future visitors of Burkina Faso, customs allows you to bring a kilo of dried caterpillars into the UK and they make for very unique gifts...

Back in April/May, I panicked: My friends in Burkina Faso told me that the rains had begun many weeks in advance. I had to leave the UK early - and, I had to find a field assistant who could help me out in June!

After frantically contacting everyone I could think of, I sat back and sighed, the impossibility of this year's data collection looming in my mind.

And that's when I heard from Sally, a second year Geography student at Cambridge, thanks to her Director of Studies, David Rose.

This is Sally:

Sally in the field

See? She loves trees, which is always a good sign. She's also a fantastic fieldworker - adaptable, hardworking, good company - and in the past couple of weeks she's been invaluable - collecting data on the newly emerging caterpillars while i have been out doing bird surveys.

You'll hear further details from her soon - he's promised to write a post for me (she says it'll be titled something like 'Burkina Faso: Impressions of a Yorkshire lass'), so watch this space. But for now, here's a few photos of Sally at work. She's leaving on Sunday and she'll be much missed!

Ninja in the field lab

Her boyfriend back home is 6'9" but these guys aren't fazed.

Antoinette, the village witch doctor, welcomed Sally with music and moonshine and laughter - what more do you need?